OpenNI vs OpenNI2

Developers are version crazy..   We love versions !  But there's a reason for that, its to catalog all the pieces of software so they worky together.  If you have put together a softwar stack 20 layers deep (module on top of application on top of JVM on top of Operating System on top of Device Driver ......)  if just One of the pieces is the wrong version you can have a system which looks like this....

Ok .. right now I have a stack of PointCloud, on top of MRL on top of Java JVM on top of Windows 7 64 bit on top of  OpenNI on top of Kinect Driver...  (and all the little  pieces I forgot to mention between)

My spidey sense is telling me that the Change from OpenNI to OpenNI2 means I need the missing "new" kinect drivers (lowest level on the Jenga puzzle) ... and here is a diagram I  found @ (http://www.openni.org/openni-migration-guide/ )

Sooooo... I need a "new" set of drivers for the new OpenNI2 - Most operating systems pairs a device (identified by a USB guid) with a single specific driver... So, if I use OpenNI2 - OpenNI will cease to work, until I remove Kinect2 device drivers and put in the "old" ones..

Point Cloud working under MRL / OpenNI Windows 7 - 64

Currently (release 1909) Point Cloud works in MRL !  And I believe all the right binaries are in the MRL-Repo to support Win 32/64 Linux 32/64 and even Mac 64 - BUT (and this is a big BUT) ... you have to have the right driver software for the kinect or xtion - something which in compatible with OpenNI

To get this working on my laptop I 

• downloaded the latest version or mrl
• started it and installed PointCloud service
• restarted mrl after installation
• started a PointCloud service named pc - went to that tap 
• pressed capture ... waited about 30 seconds .. and boom it worky although its slow

time to start working on performance improvements ..  btw this is OpenNI 1.5 - I have not successfully gotten OpenNi2 working (yet)

The hallway

Early morning coffee point cloud - with spectrum depth data.

Ok, it's slow even on an i7 .. but remember the optimizations we did on RasPi ?  It's time to start looking at OpenNI again ..  The first step is to see if the "old" service still worked .. It did !  

The next steps will be trying the "new and improved" OpenNI2.0 - then we will try to optimize it like crazy ! :D